MORE than a million hospital appointments were cancelled due to last winter’s Covid wave. Now, medics warn “everything possible” must be done to stop widespread postponements this year. Getty January was the worst affected month with 144,000 cancellations at 37 hospitals[/caption] The impact on eye and heart clinics meant thousandsContinue Reading
Varavin88/Shutterstock Back in the summer of 2021, the UK government’s pandemic modellers predicted that there would be a significant COVID outbreak in the autumn. Yet so far, this hasn’t happened. Other countries with good COVID vaccine coverage have also seen their cases fall and then stabilise. So is herd immunityContinue Reading
Subbotina Anna/Shutterstock Although COVID infections are currently low or in decline in most western countries aside from the UK, there’s still a long way to go before the threat of the pandemic is over. A big concern this winter is if there’s a resurgence of COVID with other respiratory illnessesContinue Reading
Firefighters conducting disinfection at the Terminal 3 of Wuhan Tianhe International Airport. Xinhua / Alamy Stock Photo Since the start of the pandemic, several countries have adopted a zero-COVID strategy, aiming to eradicate COVID within their borders. Faced with the highly transmissible delta variant, many are now abandoning it. NewContinue Reading
THE UK economy returned to growth in August after suffering a dip in July. According to the latest official figures, UK gross domestic product grew 0.4% in August in the first full month after Covid-19 restrictions were lifted. The UK economy resumed its recovery in August It remains 0.8% belowContinue Reading
In April 2020, I wrote about North Korea’s efforts to protect itself from COVID-19. The regime was genuinely afraid about the spread of the disease because it knew the country’s healthcare system wouldn’t cope if the virus took hold. Initially there was acceptance that, for the most part, North KoreaContinue Reading
RUSSIA stole the formula for the Oxford/ AstraZeneca jab and used it to help create its own vaccine, ministers have been told. Security services say they have proof one of Vladimir Putin’s spies swiped the vital data. Alamy Security services say they have proof one of Putin’s spies swiped theContinue Reading
shutterstock Eric Crudup/Shutterstock It is a little-known fact that humans have not one but two immune systems. The first, the biophysical immune system – the one we’ve all heard much about – responds to infections as they enter the body, detecting and eliminating intruders such as the coronavirus. The secondContinue Reading
COVID-19 vaccine production has scaled up significantly. Global output is now estimated to be over 1.5 billion doses a month, rapidly propelling the world towards the 11.3 billion doses needed to vaccinate 80% of teenagers and adults and potentially bring the pandemic to an end. Total output may reach thatContinue Reading
COVID restrictions in England were lifted on July 19, and although COVID cases are currently soaring in schoolchildren and their parents’ age group, many feel that the worst of the pandemic is now over. Thanks to the tremendous effectiveness of COVID vaccines, further lockdowns seem unlikely. However, a look atContinue Reading
